Melbourne is my type of city, much more so than Sydney.
I've always been interested in setting my stories against a big event, the importance of which my younger readers are slowly becoming aware of as they move into their teens.
I think probably you can either write for kids, or you can't. That ability to imaginatively be a child and see the world as a child and feel and think like a child - you either have that ability or you don't.
If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.
Children have limited power to shape their own lives, but when they can experiment with possibilities through books, their optimism can be recharged and kept alive.
